Data on Travel Office Head Sought After His Ouster, Letter Shows

By STEPHEN LABATON

Published: June 6, 1996

WASHINGTON, June 5—
Seven months after it dismissed its travel office staff, the White House sought information about the director of the office from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to a 1993 letter made public today.

Representative William F. Clinger Jr., a Pennsylvania Republican who disclosed the letter, said it showed that the White House had lied to the F.B.I. to obtain a report on Billy Dale, the ousted travel office director. Mr. Clinger also said the request indicated that the Administration had misused the law-enforcement agency for political ends and may have violated laws protecting Mr. Dale's rights to privacy.

But the White House said the request may have been made by mistake by junior officials trying to clear a backlog of requests for security clearances.

Mr. Dale, a career Government employee, was dismissed and accused by Administration officials of mismanaging the travel office which, among other things, handles travel arrangements for the White House press corps. Some Republicans have charged that the White House unfairly dismissed the staff to turn the operation over to cronies, and then cooked up the mismanagement charges after the dismissals provoked criticism.

Mr. Dale was tried and acquitted on embezzlement charges last year. Kenneth W. Starr, the Whitewater independent counsel, has recently opened an inquiry into the White House's handling of the dismissals.

The 1993 form letter. with the name of former White House counsel Bernard W. Nussbaum printed on it, said the White House was seeking background reports because the Administration was considering whether to give Mr. Dale access to the offices of the Executive Mansion, a contention that Mr. Dale's lawyer, Steven Tabackman, today dismissed as preposterous. Mr. Dale had left the White House months earlier, and a few weeks after the letter was sent, his lawyers were told that he would be facing an indictment.

Mr. Nussbaum said today that he never sent the letter or even knew of its existence and that he never saw any reports about Mr. Dale. White House aides said that they had no reason to doubt Mr. Nussbaum's account because the request for information was on a form that other White House aides routinely used with the F.B.I. when the Administration considered granting a security clearance or appointment.

White House aides said today they could not explain who sent the request or why it was made long after Mr. Dale had left and the Administration had come under heavy criticism for the dismissals.

Mark Fabiani, an associate White House counsel, said the F.B.I. responded by sending a series of reports on Mr. Dale, dating to his service in the Kennedy Administration, to the White House security office on Jan. 6, 1994. The reports were put in a vault in the White House, Mr. Fabiani said, and records show they were never viewed by anyone before they were transferred, in December 1994, to the White House archives.

Mr. Clinger, the chairman of a House committee that has been investigating the way the White House removed the staff of the travel office, said the request demonstrated that the White House had been using the F.B.I. for political ends.

"I find it disturbing that the President and his current counsel invoked executive privilege to cover up the fact that the White House was digging through the F.B.I. background files of a private citizen for what certainly appears to be political purposes," Mr. Clinger said.